This paper studies the global variation in economic preferences. For this purpose, we present the Global Preference Survey (GPS), an experimentally validated survey dataset of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 80,000 individuals in 76 countries. The data reveal substantial heterogeneity in preferences across countries, but even larger within-country heterogeneity. Across individuals, preferences vary with age, gender, and cognitive ability, yet these relationships appear partly country specific. At the country level, the data reveal correlations between preferences and bio-geographic and cultural variables such as agricultural suitability, language structure, and religion. Variation in preferences is also correlated with economic outcomes and behaviors. Within countries and subnational regions, preferences are linked to individual savings decisions, labor market choices, and prosocial behaviors. Across countries, preferences vary with aggregate outcomes ranging from per capita income, to entrepreneurial activities, to the frequency of armed conflicts.

...

This paper explores these questions by making use of the core features of the GPS: (i) coverage of 76 countries that represent approximately 90 percent of the world population; (ii) representative population samples within each country for a total of 80,000 respondents, (iii) measures designed to capture time preference, risk preference, altruism, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and trust, based on an ex ante experimental validation procedure (Falk et al., 2016) as well as pre-tests in culturally heterogeneous countries, (iv) standardized elicitation and translation techniques through the pre-existing infrastructure of a global polling institute, Gallup. Upon publication, the data will be made publicly available online. The data on individual preferences are complemented by a comprehensive set of covariates provided by the Gallup World Poll 2012.

...

The GPS preference measures are based on twelve survey items, which were selected in an initial survey validation study (see Falk et al., 2016, for details). The validation procedure involved conducting multiple incentivized choice experiments for each preference, and testing the relative abilities of a wide range of different question wordings and formats to predict behavior in these choice experiments. The particular items used to construct the GPS preference measures were selected based on optimal performance out of menus of alternative items (for details see Falk et al., 2016). Experiments provide a valuable benchmark for selecting survey items, because they can approximate the ideal choice situations, specified in economic theory, in which individuals make choices in controlled decision contexts. Experimental measures are very costly, however, to implement in a globally representative sample, whereas survey measures are much less costly.⁴ Selecting survey measures that can stand in for incentivized revealed preference measures leverages the strengths of both approaches.

Figure 3: Gender coefficients by country. For each country, we regress the respective preference on gender, age and its square, and subjective math skills, and plot the resulting gender coefficients as well as their significance level. In order to make countries comparable, each preference was standardized (z-scores) within each country before computing the coefficients.

Figure 4: Cognitive ability coefficients by country. For each country, we regress the respective preference on gender, age and its square, and subjective math skills, and plot the resulting coefficients on subjective math skills as well as their significance level. In order to make countries comparable, each preference was standardized (z-scores) within each country before computing the coefficients.

A comprehensive program of new experiments reveals the considerable economic impact of cohesion: higher cohesion groups are significantly more likely to achieve Pareto-superior outcomes in classic weak-link coordination games. We show that effects of cohesion are economically large, robust, and portable. We identify social preferences as a primary mechanism explaining the effects of cohesion.

...

Our workhorse to study group outcomes is a weak-link coordination game chosen because it captures economically interesting problems endemic to organizations and teams (e.g., Camerer and Weber (2013)). In our version of the weak-link game, inspired by Brandts and Cooper (2006), group members simultaneously choose an effort level. Payoffs to each group member then depend on their own effort and the lowest effort chosen by anyone (the “weakest link”) in the group. The game has multiple strict Pareto-ranked Nash equilibria in material payoffs. This feature makes it particularly interesting for our purposes because it combines two dimensions of group success: features of coordination (choosing the same effort level as other group members) and cooperation (groups achieving Pareto-superior Nash equilibria). We expected our weak-link game to be a “harsh” environment in the sense that most groups who play this game under anonymity and in the absence of pre-existing social relationships will collapse to the Pareto-worst equilibrium and never escape from it (Brandts and Cooper (2006), and own replication).

As we show in Section V, group cohesion is a key determinant of behavior in our experiments: low cohesion groups usually descend rapidly to minimum effort; high cohesion groups fare much better and high cohesion appears necessary (though not sufficient) for achieving Pareto-superior outcomes. Surprisingly, our measure of group cohesion is the only variable that successfully predicts cooperation success; none of more than twenty control variables (demographics and group characteristics) explain minimum effort. Further experiments show that our results are robust to the timing of oneness measurement (before or after play of the weak-link game). By benchmarking our results against the effect of monetary incentives, we also show (Section VI) that the effortenhancing effects of group cohesion are sizeable: large financial incentives are needed to achieve the levels of minimum effort expected for high cohesion groups.

In Section VII we turn to an explanation of our results. A rational choice perspective suggests three natural channels through which group cohesion could operate: it might affect some combination of group members’ social preferences, their beliefs or the form of their strategic reasoning. Considering social preferences, it is plausible to assume that members of highly cohesive groups care about one another and so place weight on each other’s earnings.1 In our weak-link game, if players do draw utility from each other’s earnings, this is tantamount to (some) sharing of earnings, which reduces strategic risk and fosters coordination on Pareto-superior equilibria.2 In relation to beliefs, highly cohesive groups may be more confident in simulating other group members’ thought processes and likely actions, perhaps because of a history of interactions in different (related) situations, which allows for implicit learning (e.g., Holyoak and Spellman (1993), Rick and Weber (2010)). Finally, group cohesion might influence the nature of strategic reasoning in more substantive ways. For instance, according to one model of strategic thinking, “team reasoning” (e.g., Sugden (2003), Bacharach (2006)), people think in terms of what would be best for the team (e.g., picking the Pareto-best equilibrium) and are inclined to do their part in implementing the group-optimal outcome. An interesting possibility is that team reasoning may be more likely the more cohesive the team is. These three channels might operate jointly and potentially reinforce each other in high cohesion groups. By contrast, low cohesion groups may have low levels of social preferences, little implicit learning to draw on from shared situations, and no team perception to facilitate team reasoning.

We probe these possibilities in two steps. We first show that subjects who report high oneness with their fellow group members are indeed more likely to expose themselves to the strategic risk of choosing high initial effort in our weak-link games; they are also less “harsh” in their responses when others’ effort levels are below their own. In highly cohesive groups, these tendencies apply across group members promoting coordination on equilibria above the Pareto-worst.

Our second step is to identify the social preferences channel as a promising route for explaining observed effects of group cohesion. We demonstrate this via additional experiments in which unrelated and anonymous group members play weak-link games but with all earnings shared equally. We interpret this manipulation as inducing a limiting form of social preferences (where all put equal weight on everyone’s material payoffs). The results show patterns of effort (opening levels and dynamics) very comparable to the top third most cohesive groups from our main experiment. Thus, social preferences provide a parsimonious candidate explanation of how group cohesion promotes Pareto-superior equilibria.

Those are the numbers. They paint a very clear picture: American men are failing, in body, mind and spirit. This is a crisis. Yet our leaders pretend it’s not happening. They tell us the opposite is true: Women are victims, men are oppressors. To question that assumption is to risk punishment. Even as women far outpace men in higher education, virtually every college campus supports a women’s studies department, whose core goal is to attack male power. Our politicians and business leaders internalize and amplify that message. Men are privileged. Women are oppressed. Hire and promote and reward accordingly.

https://pinboard.in/u:nhaliday/b:bd7b0a50d741
But it also hints at an almost opposite take: average testosterone levels have been falling for decades, so at this point these businessmen would be the only “normal” (by 1950s standards) men out there, and everyone else would be unprecedently risk-averse and boring.

Freedom Of Thought As A Perpetual Revolution: https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/13/freedom-of-thought-as-a-perpetual-revolution/
I mentioned offhand on Twitter today that I am skeptical of the tendency to brand the classically liberal emphasis on freedom of thought and speech as “centrist.” The implicit idea is that those on the Right and Left for whom liberalism is conditional, and a means at best, are radical and outside the mainstream.

This misleads us in relation to the fact that classical liberalism is the aberration both historically and culturally. Liberty of thought and speech have existed for time immemorial, but they were the luxury goods of the elite salons. Frederick the Great of Prussia had no use for religion personally, and famously patronized heretical philosophers, but he did not disturb the conservative social order of the polity which he inherited. For the masses, the discourse was delimited and regulated to maintain order and reinforce social norms.

The attempt to position the liberal stance as a centrist one is clearly historically and culturally contingent. It reflects the ascendancy of a particular strand of Anglo-American elite culture worldwide. But it is not universal. In the Islamic world and South Asia free expression of skepticism of religious ideas in public are subject to limits explicitly to maintain public order. The Islamic punishments for apostasy have less to do with the sin of individual disbelief and more to do with disruption to public norms and sedition against the state. Similarly, both China and Russia tap deeply into cultural preferences for state and elite paternalism in regards to public freedom of thought.

It’s also about taking a long view of our own self-interests—that is, recognizing that if we agree not to suppress the other tribe, then the other tribe just might agree, as a general rule, to not suppress us. If adhered to, it can be positive sum transaction—the free exchange of ideas ultimately makes life richer and more prosperous for everyone. Liberalism is a bargain between elites to set up institutions that allow this positive-sum process to take place despite all the forces working against it.

https://today.yougov.com/news/2017/10/02/americans-support-free-speech-college-campusmost-t/
In fact, Americans prioritize exposing students to all types of speech on campuses, even if that speech is biased or offensive, to providing a positive learning environment for all students at the risk of barring some types of speech. Sometimes this type of question generates a politicized response, depending on the speech that respondents think may be restricted. The most recent and most publicized college incidents involve conservative speakers who have been shouted down or have had speeches on campuses canceled. On this question Democrats and Republicans may be on different sides, but liberals and conservatives agree.

It has been widely demonstrated that parental divorce is associated with negative outcomes for affected children. However, the degree of causality in this relationship is not as clear. This column tackles this problem by using the level of gender integration in fathers’ workplaces as an instrument for divorce. The results suggest a causal link between divorce and worse economic outcomes that persists into early adulthood. http://ftp.iza.org/dp9928.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904543/
The literature on father absence is frequently criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to take account of possible omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We review studies that have responded to this critique by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models. Our assessment is that studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs. The evidence is strongest and most consistent for outcomes such as high school graduation, children’s social-emotional adjustment, and adult mental health.

Genetics, the Rearing Environment, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce: A Swedish National Adoption Study: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617734864
There was stronger resemblance to lived-with mothers, providing indirect evidence of rearing-environment influences on the intergenerational transmission of divorce. The heritability of divorce assessed across generations was 0.13. We attempted to replicate our findings using within-generation data from adoptive and biological siblings (ns = 8,523–53,097). Adoptees resembled their biological, not adoptive, siblings in their history of divorce. Thus, there was consistent evidence that genetic factors contributed to the intergenerational transmission of divorce but weaker evidence for a rearing-environment effect of divorce. Within-generation data from siblings supported these conclusions.

The Long-Term Effects of Legalizing Divorce on Children: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/obes.12200/abstract
We find that women who grew up under legal divorce have lower earnings and income and worse health as adults compared with women who grew up under illegal divorce. These negative effects are not found for men.